SWMustang
04-06-2010, 03:28 PM
Didn't see much about this in the news...
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/04/06/2010-04-06_easter_night_mayhem_evokes_scarier_times.html?r ef=rss
The back of the police wagon opened outside Manhattan Criminal Court and the first of the accused marauders stepped out in pants that hung so low his red boxers were almost fully exposed.
He also wore a red top, which may have marked him as a member of the Bloods gang, although the more significant detail was the Polo logo over the right breast.
A prisoner behind him wore a white shirt with an outsize version of this same logo, a perennial favorite among the street set. Others on the daisy chain had opted to wear plaid, the latest in city fashion.
However many Bloods and Crips members may have been among the rowdy crew that swarmed through Times Square Sunday night, it was less a gang event than the continuation of a tradition that began as a kind of fashion stroll back in the bad old days.
In the 1980s, when the city seemed virtually uncontrollable, Coney Island was the place to be on Easter. The idea was to wear all your gold. The challenge was to still have it when you went home.
I can remember being there with a young cop named Jack Maple a quarter century ago when gunfire suddenly erupted and a crowd of several thousand scattered in all directions.
Nobody was hit and the crowd reassembled, laughing and dancing to the music from the Polar Express amusement ride, giddy with the power of numbers.
That was in a time when crews dubbed "wolfpacks" rode in from the outer boroughs to hunt for "vics," grabbing whatever cash and jewelry they could.
"Manhattan make it and Brooklyn take it!" was a popular cry.
That ended after the police began countering the power of numbers with numbers of their own, along with rapid deployment and relentless followup. Cops began hunting down every member of a crew rather than being satisfied with whomever they chanced to grab.
When the NYPD applied this same approach to crimes of every kind, New York became the safest big city in America.
Still, the Easter tradition persisted even as gold largely passed out of fashion. And as Coney Island declined, the annual gathering shifted to the Times Square area. The power of numbers still got some people giddy, and there were disturbances in three of the last four years.
This year marked an escalation as four people were shot. A great cancer nurse I know named Ann Culkin was leaving the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 12:03 a.m. with two bags when she found herself caught in a crowd. She saw big numbers of cops, some on horseback. She then heard a shout.
"Someone's shot!"
Culkin was struggling to head uptown when a cop offered advice such as is seldom heard in this safest of big cities.
"Get yourself a cab and get out of here."
Culkin felt as if she were escaping from some time warp that had taken her back to the bad old days, and that feeling is what really made this Easter gathering different.
The 33 accused marauders were awaiting arraignment Monday when a man named Terhan Bey was brought before the judge for beating the subway fare. The prosecutor noted Bey is one of the "Dirty Dozen" quality-of-life violators the mayor spoke of during his 2009 State of the City speech, but nobody seemed much impressed.
The big buzz down at court was about the many dozens the mayor said had gone "wilding," the ones who made you worry that the bad old days could return for more than a few hours on Easter night.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/04/06/2010-04-06_easter_night_mayhem_evokes_scarier_times.html?r ef=rss#ixzz0kM0J4OUN
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/04/06/2010-04-06_easter_night_mayhem_evokes_scarier_times.html?r ef=rss
The back of the police wagon opened outside Manhattan Criminal Court and the first of the accused marauders stepped out in pants that hung so low his red boxers were almost fully exposed.
He also wore a red top, which may have marked him as a member of the Bloods gang, although the more significant detail was the Polo logo over the right breast.
A prisoner behind him wore a white shirt with an outsize version of this same logo, a perennial favorite among the street set. Others on the daisy chain had opted to wear plaid, the latest in city fashion.
However many Bloods and Crips members may have been among the rowdy crew that swarmed through Times Square Sunday night, it was less a gang event than the continuation of a tradition that began as a kind of fashion stroll back in the bad old days.
In the 1980s, when the city seemed virtually uncontrollable, Coney Island was the place to be on Easter. The idea was to wear all your gold. The challenge was to still have it when you went home.
I can remember being there with a young cop named Jack Maple a quarter century ago when gunfire suddenly erupted and a crowd of several thousand scattered in all directions.
Nobody was hit and the crowd reassembled, laughing and dancing to the music from the Polar Express amusement ride, giddy with the power of numbers.
That was in a time when crews dubbed "wolfpacks" rode in from the outer boroughs to hunt for "vics," grabbing whatever cash and jewelry they could.
"Manhattan make it and Brooklyn take it!" was a popular cry.
That ended after the police began countering the power of numbers with numbers of their own, along with rapid deployment and relentless followup. Cops began hunting down every member of a crew rather than being satisfied with whomever they chanced to grab.
When the NYPD applied this same approach to crimes of every kind, New York became the safest big city in America.
Still, the Easter tradition persisted even as gold largely passed out of fashion. And as Coney Island declined, the annual gathering shifted to the Times Square area. The power of numbers still got some people giddy, and there were disturbances in three of the last four years.
This year marked an escalation as four people were shot. A great cancer nurse I know named Ann Culkin was leaving the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 12:03 a.m. with two bags when she found herself caught in a crowd. She saw big numbers of cops, some on horseback. She then heard a shout.
"Someone's shot!"
Culkin was struggling to head uptown when a cop offered advice such as is seldom heard in this safest of big cities.
"Get yourself a cab and get out of here."
Culkin felt as if she were escaping from some time warp that had taken her back to the bad old days, and that feeling is what really made this Easter gathering different.
The 33 accused marauders were awaiting arraignment Monday when a man named Terhan Bey was brought before the judge for beating the subway fare. The prosecutor noted Bey is one of the "Dirty Dozen" quality-of-life violators the mayor spoke of during his 2009 State of the City speech, but nobody seemed much impressed.
The big buzz down at court was about the many dozens the mayor said had gone "wilding," the ones who made you worry that the bad old days could return for more than a few hours on Easter night.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/04/06/2010-04-06_easter_night_mayhem_evokes_scarier_times.html?r ef=rss#ixzz0kM0J4OUN